


Define Gentleman

by TheColorBlue



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Transgender, complicated but generally amiable relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 11:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About Eames 'back when he used to use female pronouns' and about Eames the Forger as of today.<br/>Or: a story that's kind of about Eames as a female-to-male trangender, but also about him and Arthur, and their kind-of relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eames

Even back in the days when Eames was using the feminine pronouns—as he liked to describe it—he was the kind of person who was aware of how appearances and mannerisms affected an interaction, the way that a person was treated. You’d think that maybe a bloke who looked so delicate and feminine would grow up resenting it, but Eames…hadn’t _necessarily_. There were a lot of advantages to it, actually. There were disadvantages too, particularly the older he got, the more shapely his body got; if it was bad enough having to make faces at it in the mirror, it could be worse all those occasions he got so much unwanted attention for it. 

Growing up, though, particularly growing up in a family of money, and old money at that—you acted a certain way, and people treated you gentler than they would a boy, with greater patience. Or maybe just him. Maybe it was him turning on the façade of bashful charm, and perfectly aware of it. As a slightly _older_ female-type person—well, Eames learned you could act a certain way, and suddenly the men around you were completely obtuse. It could be annoying as hell, yes, but also it meant that Eames got a lot of practice pick-pocketing people blind, and _that_ was nice. 

Eames always knew that there was something not quite…well, ‘not right’ wasn’t right, but it was the best that he could come up with at the time…there was something not right about his life, and quite frankly the feeling was hateful. He knew how to be a certain way, to act a certain way, and as a teenager he’d take to dressing a particular way when not forced into an ill-fitting school uniform, and people would call him a “tom-boy.”

At seventeen, Eames looked into his full-length mirror one day, touching and tugging at his long, brown hair, and then he thought—he knew, as if knowing for a very long time—he wasn’t a tom-boy, he was a boy-boy, and if he had been feeling particularly dramatic, he might have reached for a pair of scissors and cut off his own hair. He didn’t. 

Then, anyway. 

\--

The female shape that he would wear during the Inception job didn’t quite look like him, back from the old days, but there was a certain resemblance anyhow. 

Maybe it was the long hair. 

More likely, it was the confident look, that smile that had a certain wry, knowingness to it. 

That was completely him, Eames, ever and after. 

\--

Of all people, the odd thing was that Arthur never did care about—you know, all of the physical aspect of it, surgical scarring on top of the usual everything else. Eames had had enough bad experiences with _that_ to be cagey about taking anyone to bed, but Arthur was a lot of things, and among the words, “gentleman” could have been included. For the most part, anyway. He was a gentleman when it counted. 

So they’d had a sort of fling, once. Cobb and Arthur had been taking a job in Italy. Eames had been recruited as forger. Things had gone all right. 

It was the time that Eames worked with Arthur—Arthur working independently, not with Cobb—in Nevada that everything went pear-shaped—the job, really, not the afterhours business; and the job had left things between them strained enough that they never really did talk to each other again. Not until Paris, and Inception. 

Eames didn’t dislike Arthur, really. 

Cobb kept the man on some sort of absurd leash of loyalty, and Arthur really was an utter stick in the mud, but he wasn’t a bad man. 

\--

Yusuf was Eames’ man in Mombasa, in terms of loyalty and professional-amiable feelings, but even he didn’t know much about Eames’ personal past. 

First of all: only a fool would be in the habit of telling all when in this particular line of business, and second of all: it honestly had no bearing on Eames’ profession and professionalism in the present-now. 

\--

Arthur never, had never asked Eames if that particular aspect of him had influenced his becoming a forger. 

It was the first time, and they’d been in Italy. Sex had been had, and now they were dressed, and Arthur was sitting by the window, drinking wine for breakfast and reading a newspaper printed in Italian. 

Eames had a tie hanging loose around his neck, and was cursing cheerfully at a shirt that he was trying to iron, and that refused to be ironed. He supposed that he’d simply have to step out into the streets of Sienna looking an utter slob was all. 

“I don’t understand how a man like you got involved with all of Cobb’s messy business,” Eames was saying at last. Arthur hadn’t strictly told him about Cobb’s charges of murder, etc. but by this point it was fairly an open secret. 

“You didn’t know him from before,” was what Arthur said in reply. “When Mal was alive—he was a different man, then.” He laid down his newspaper then, a little, and said, “Suppose I should help you with that?”

“Forget it,” Eames said. “I give up. Damn this shirt,” and he pulled it off the ironing board and slipped his arms through the sleeves, the cloth pleasantly hot against his bare skin. He turned round, as if showing it off to Arthur, and Arthur looked at him and raised his glass. 

There were a lot of things that mattered, in that profession, in that day, and the light scarring on Eames’ chest was one of the things that didn’t. 

Matter, that was. 

\--

Pity things got so odd between them, all those months and in-between. 

Few men could be called “good” in this line of business, and even Arthur wasn’t strictly one of them.

Still, it was a pity. 

\--

The light of the room was dim, everything hushed and hurried as they prepared to enter the next dream level. Eames lay on the plush carpet of the floor. 

“Security will run you down hard,” he said in a low voice, looking up as Arthur helped him with the IV. 

Arthur said, lightly: “Then I will lead them on a merry chase.”

Eames couldn’t help it then, laughing soundlessly, before tossing one more at Arthur, “Just be back before the kick.”

Arthur stood up and away, and Eames lay his head down then, waiting for the next dream to take hold.


	2. Arthur

The reality of poking about in another person’s subconscious was that you never learned as much about them as maybe you thought, or you imagined that you would. There was probably some poetic metaphor out there about the mind being a mystery wrapped in a puzzle wrapped in silver chocolate foil and like a box of chocolates you never did know what exactly you were going to get yourself into, but Arthur never was a poet, and if Eames’ opinions of him were anything to hang a coat on, Arthur had “no imagination.” 

Imagination was such an intangible commodity, produced in all shapes and types, what did Eames even know about that matter. 

Eames was brilliant, of course, regardless of the occasional dry jibe; Arthur hated working with people who were sub-par, although sometimes you never could be choosey about it. This was particularly true when you were desperate. Like Dom. 

Thinking back on it, there was a whole list that Arthur could have written up about that, in his tiny, spare hand-writing. There was the unfortunate partnership with Nash. And then there was the shade of Mal. There was lying to the entire team on the Fischer job. There was all of that. In all honesty: after the Fischer job, Arthur left Cobb at the airport and did not look back. It was nearly too easy, stepping out into the warm Los Angeles air, taking in the smell of car exhaust, and almost forgetting the sensation of a room spinning. 

He needed to go somewhere to clear his head.

\--

When they first became involved with each other, no, Arthur hadn’t cared when Eames had informed him about the surgical alterations he’d had. You could probably lay in the usual stories about “boys being born in girls’ bodies” or however else it was put in the literature, but Eames was simply Eames. Actually, he looked sometimes like he could have been comfortable wearing any kind of shape, wrapping himself up in the sensation like warm coats and cozy scarves. 

The reality was, there wasn’t a lot that could make Arthur blink, if you were going to lay it out in a rational way. Being in this business, he’d met too many kinds of people, seen too much of the fantastic constructed up from nothing in dreams, and catching all these glimpses of people’s inner-most minds. Of course, on the other hand: just because you could see something in a visual way, or even take it in like scent or warmth or taste—absorbing sensory impressions didn’t mean you understood any of it as parts of a whole. Sometimes Arthur wasn’t even sure if it was worth “trying to understand it,” the way that people usually used that phrase. 

When Eames told him, and only the barest minimum, mind you, in that smooth way of his—Arthur had considered all of that, and then finished his drink and said, “Fine,” and meant it. 

They’d gone back to the hotel after that. 

\--

They’d fought during the job in Nevada. Well, they’d argued. Something about the two of them and the architect running for their lives after a job gone terrible, and things shouted like _how could you let this happen_ and _you fucking idiot_ and being at each other’s throats for three days, while the figurative hounds were at their heels. 

It had been ugly. 

Still—a few weeks after the job, Arthur had thought about trying to contact Eames. A little bird had told him that Eames was somewhere in Turkey, at the time. Arthur had sat in his flat in Los Angeles, considering the information he’d collected on his computer. He’d had thought about it, and then he’d thought about Eames’ normally pleasant face contorted in both anxiety and rage, and he never bring himself to pursue the thought further than that, except to keep an idle tab on Eames’ general whereabouts. In case. 

\--

After the Fischer job, Arthur stood outside LAX and flagged down a taxi, and then he got in. Then he looked over in surprise when he heard the other door opening.

“Oh, fuck it, no,” was what came out of his mouth.

Eames smiled at him jauntily, as he slid in. “Mind if I share the cab?” 

\--

The next evening, Eames paid for dinner. 

They were sitting at a table in the corner of a tiny Japanese restaurant, located in San Francisco. Arthur had told Eames that he was heading up north, distancing himself from Los Angeles. Saito wanted to monitor Fischer’s progress for a week or so, tidy up any other loose ends, and then he had expressed the desire to invite the team to a dinner, which was also probably an invitation for continued business relations in the future. 

In the meanwhile, everyone was lying low, Ariadne was staying with relatives in Oregon, Yusuf was undoubtedly enjoying his newfound wealth somewhere or other—well, actually Seattle, for some reason—and here Arthur was, stuck with Eames in San Francisco.

A waitress took their orders. After she left, Arthur poured himself some tea from the steaming pot. 

He said, “I don’t know what you’re fishing for, but as it stands, I’m a very boring man. I plan to take my share of the money, go on vacation, and visit my mother.” Then, “All right, your turn.”

Eames looked unperturbed, and also a little amused. “I’ll probably go back to Mombasa,” he said. “I’ve grown to be quite fond of it there, my little apartment and all of that.” 

Arthur nearly wanted to go over there and rattle him in his chair. 

“Eames,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got my own question,” Eames countered. “What kept you tied up to Dom for so long?”

“That asshole,” Arthur said, but without managing to bring any venom to it. He took another sip of his tea. He said, “I don’t know. Loyalty, I suppose.”

“Well, then,” Eames said, raising his own cup. The cup was empty, so it was almost certainly for the gesture alone. Then, as if in a rare moment, “You were kind to me, once.” He inclined his head at Arthur, ever so slightly. “It’s hard to forget that.” 

Arthur looked at Eames. “I suppose it is,” he said at last, taking that in. 

“When I was a little girl,” Eames said, like telling a fairy tale, “I thought… so much foolishness. Who can even tell, these days.”

Eames seemed to consider the empty cup in his hand, and then he poured himself some tea as well, the steam rising up. 

Then, “I wonder what kind of nonsense Saito has planned for us,” Eames said. “He always did like things to be neat—and us dispersing after the job, like this—hardly his style. He’ll probably want to be sure that we’ll come back, for future jobs; maybe even legal ones, at that. Maybe fund Ariadne’s education; rising star among dreamshare architects if I ever saw one.” 

“That’s a frightening thought.” 

Eames raised his cup again, but somehow, the gesture was more open now than it was before. Maybe it was the line of his shoulders, something subtle like that, along with the light expression on his face. 

After a moment, Arthur raised his as well, and they touched cups, but for what reason, Arthur still wasn’t quite sure. 

Then Eames said something about ordering Sake, and yes, fine. All right. 

Eames always did accuse him of being a stick-up-his-arse, but fine. 

When the waitress came, it was Sake for two. 

Maybe the warm alcohol would mellow him out. Arthur thought: maybe, maybe, maybe, and Eames poured him more tea when the first cup ran out.


End file.
